Clough: The Nation Israel-The Church Lesson 1

North Stonington Bible Church – 10-15-02

I thought I’d kind of extend what we did in the conference, starting with the ascension and session of Christ, and some of the fallout from that, some of the things that have happened. So just to kind of get the flow let me tell you how I’ve kind of planned this to work out. Tonight I’m going to deal with how after Christ ascended and after He was seated at the right hand, He and God the Father sent the Holy Spirit to the earth. So that is an event that happened in this sequence. Tomorrow morning I’m going to deal with one of the results of that which is when and why did the Church begin, that’s the next thing that happened. Then I’m going to deal with how the Church has its own place in God’s plan and does not replace Israel. Those of you who have studied this a little bit understand by the topic, the third one, that there’s kind of a theme here and what my plea is as we think about these events in Scripture is that Reformed Theology…we’ve got to get beyond Reformed Theology. Evangelicals are falling back into Reformed Theology; there’s nothing wrong with what the Reformers did in the 1600s, they clarified the gospel and for that we can be very, very thankful, but there’s a lot of stuff that they never dealt with. They never dealt with eschatology; they never really reformed the Biblical view of the Church. They simply replaced the Catholic church-state with state churches, wherever they went in Europe.

So what we want to look at is: has the Holy Spirit been in the teaching business since 1650 and obviously the Holy Spirit has, and so we want to move on from Reformed Theology to what dispensationalism shows about the nature of the Church: why we’re here, how we are to operate because the Church has its own set of instructions, different from those given to the nation Israel, the Church is not a nation, Israel is a nation, there are a lot of differences. And hopefully this will begin to clarify, if you are confused by this issue, why the New Testament has certain commands in it and other commands are missing that were given to the nation Israel. So I want to deal with the distinctions, since the ascension and session of Christ, we want to start dealing with the distinctives of the New Testament era.

Tonight we’re going to just deal with one act, one act that resulted in a public event and that is what the Lord Jesus Christ did after He ascended. He went to be with the Father. Now just to kind of get a little background we want to review something about the ascension and session. The ascension and session was, in one sense, a surprise. If you look at the history of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospels, if you were to read any of the four Gospels and you were to think in terms of the popularity of Jesus to the society in which He was preaching, the nation Israel, if you were to diagram His popularity on a graph, it started out with John the Baptist, that was His official public introduction to the nation, He is introduced by John the Baptist because John the Baptist was what? Why do all the Gospels start with John the Baptist and not Jesus? Because John the Baptist is the prophet and in the Old Testament the prophet was the king-maker. Who was it that anointed Saul? It was Samuel. And then he anointed David, and then later a prophet was helping David, called Nathan.

So the prophets were always God’s men who had this private line, so to speak, with God who at critical times would step into the national limelight and say you are to be the king. It wasn’t left to an election campaign, it wasn’t smoke-filled rooms in which political deals were made for certain kings, unlike the situation in Syria, Iraq, Iran, those countries known then as Persia and Babylon. Those countries had political intrigue and you can read about it, go to the library and read about the dynasties and all the little deals that went on. That wasn’t true in Israel; Israel had a lot of shenanigans going on in the apostate mode but the whole history of Samuel, for example, is the story of succession of dynastic succession that was very, very critical in the plan of God. Who was the first king in Israel? Saul, and the house of Saul, by “house” we mean the dynasty of Saul. Who was in line to be king? It was not David. It was Saul’s son; Saul’s son was Jonathan; Jonathan was the next in line in the house of Saul. Well, what do we have in the story that you read in the Bible? Who are the two friends? Jonathan and David, who’s the guy who’s going to replace the house of Saul, and it’s a remarkable story if you think politically. Jonathan was heir apparent to the throne, and his best friend is the guy who’s going to replace him. And these guys stay friends all during this; it’s a remarkable story. Had this taken place in any other nation on earth they would have been at each other’s throats, trying to kill each other. But there you had a change in dynasty that was superintended by these mysterious men called the prophets.

So it’s no different when we come to the New Testament; the New Testament does not start with Jesus, it starts with a prophet, who, just like in the Old Testament this is the guy who was commissioned by God to introduce leadership to the nation. So John makes his announcement and so the Lord Jesus Christ is presented publicly and His movement grows. So Jesus becomes more and more popular, more and more people cluster around Him, miracles are done. And then a strange thing happens; halfway through all four Gospels, it doesn’t matter what Gospel you read, any of the four will do the same thing, something happens right here and then Jesus begins and His popularity is decreased. And at that point, you have that passage in Matthew about the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, it happens right here; right after that you have Matthew 13 and He begins a totally different teaching technique. Now He begins to teach in terms of parables. See, it puzzle’s people, you know, Lord, You taught the Sermon on the Mount, that was clear, everybody understood it, now all of a sudden you’re teaching parabolically, you’re teaching in code. Why is everything so esoteric all of a sudden? And worse, from the disciples point of view, not only was He teaching in parables but He introduced a new theme that they had never in their last waking moments would have thought was associated with the Messiah, and that is, He’s not going to be around much longer. What? The Messiah, who was long prophesied to become the eternal king of Israel isn’t going to be around?

So things change halfway through the Gospels and you have to understand why that’s going on and the significance of each of the four Gospels telling us the same story. The Lord Jesus Christ came on schedule to the nation and the nation rejected Him and finally this winds up in the crucifixion; it represents a national rejection of God through His chosen people. And this rejection is to be traced back, and we can’t sit here and be self-righteous about it, this rejection traces back to the same thing. What did the people want in a Messiah? See, frankly from their point of view, let’s understand them for a minute, from their point of view Jesus didn’t fit what I want. I don’t want a Messiah that does things the way He does; I want a Messiah that gives me freedom from Rome; I want a Messiah that blesses me, I want a Messiah that’s going to give me prosperity, but I don’t want to deal with my own personal relationship with God, I don’t really want to get too spooky and spiritual and religious about this, I just want political freedom. And this is one of the tones that was going on. We can identify with that; everybody in the room, we’re big boys and girls; we know that the flesh doesn’t like to be held accountable and responsible before God, our Creator. We flee that, and it’s a natural tendency of our fallen nature to do that. It’s like the bumper sticker that says: If at first you don’t succeed, blame someone else and seek counseling. That’s the motif of what’s going on, and we all have that same tendency to do that, and Israel had that. So this represents the rejection of responsibility, Jesus got a little too deep for these folks.

So when He begins to announce this departure it comes as a big surprise to the disciples because what now happens, whereas before, if we could draw a picture of their hope, the Messiah would come and the Messiah would bring in the kingdom. So we have the kingdom here as a result of the Messiah. And Jesus made spiritual demands; He said everybody doesn’t get in this kingdom, only some people get in the kingdom and the ones that get in the kingdom are the ones that obey Me. And if you’re not interested in obeying Me we’re going to get rid of you, only believers are going to enter this kingdom. Well, when the Messiah goes away, a big question mark comes up. Now what do we do? What happens to the kingdom if the King isn’t here; if He’s going to go away somewhere how can He bring in the kingdom? And that’s the struggle that’s going on in Matthew 13 when we start introducing these mysteries of the kingdom and so forth, and to make a long story short, we all know what happened, the Lord Jesus Christ died, He ascended into heaven, He is seated at the Father’s right hand and now history has a new period of time in it and we’re still in that period of time. We’re not in the kingdom age; it hasn’t come yet. The kingdom now has been pushed off into the future and in its place we have an inter-advent age.

And this is the new thing that’s now introduced into history; it was not really clearly seen in the Old Testament, that this would happen, but now it has happened. So it’s as though you have an accordion, you know how an accordion pulls out, well, they saw the accordion kind of collapse and what Jesus did, He said if the nation isn’t going to accept Me, so for the time being I’m rejected and since I am rejected I’m leaving, and I’m leaving disciples here on earth but I’m leaving and if I leave I will have to come back again because I promised the kingdom, but the kingdom is not going to come until I come back. So now we have an inter-advent age in which we still live, that has not yet got the kingdom; we don’t have yet world peace.

Now this change and this shift that goes on is very dramatic, I mean, if we could have gotten into the heads of Old Testament saints to read the Gospels as they would have read them, this it’s hard for us because we live after the fact and we’re Monday morning quarterbacks, but if we hadn’t had the benefit of the New Testament and we were marching on through this, this is a dramatic thing and very upsetting thing and a very new thing and a very surprising thing that goes on in the Gospels. And it’s an example of how God works.

We might just take a little principle of application here; God works in mysterious ways and one of the frustrating ways He works, it seems like, in history He’ll take two steps forward and then it looks like there’s a reversal, and then lo and behold He comes back to this point and takes two more steps. So it’s like He takes two steps forward and then there’s an apparent defeat here. We’ve all seen this in our own Christian lives and we can get discouraged when this happens but actually in the way God works and the way His Spirit works is He’s usually doing that to retrain us in a lesson we missed the first time, didn’t get it the first time. So it’s like school, you flunk and get pulled back a grade, and now you keep on marching forward.

Well, Satan came to stop this kingdom; we know that, because the kingdom represents the end of Satan’s career. So obviously Satan is fighting here; this isn’t happening in a vacuum, history is not a clean state, history is not a sterile hospital ward, if there is any such thing as a sterile hospital ward left any more. The point is that we have a situation where Satan is going to oppose this kingdom to his end. So he now opposes and he tries to kill the King. He’s a murderer; he’s going to try to kill the King because he knows if he can kill the King he can stop the progress toward the kingdom. So therefore he works through the leadership of the nation to block the kingdom by trying to kill the King. Now when he does this maneuver it looks for all the world and the early Christians felt this, we don’t because the cross…it’s no longer an embarrassment but frankly the fact that Lord Jesus Christ was crucified on a cross outside the city of Jerusalem represents an embarrassment to the early church. Why was it an embarrassment? Because it represented a criminal execution; you know, they’re walking around saying the guy that was criminally executed is the Messiah, and the Old Testament said he who hangs on a tree is cursed of God.

But now watch something, and this the squeaky neat thing about God. If you want an image of how God works, I don’t play chess that much but I have some friends who do and if you can think of a master chess player, you know he moves the pieces on the board and you jump his piece, I’ve got you, and all of a sudden you find out the piece that you jumped him gets zapped, not only does that one get zapped, half of yours get cleaned off the board. And watch what happens here. He tries to kill the king and he uses the means of Jewish, under Jewish law the execution was a curse. This is Galatians, if you read in Galatians Paul refers to this, he talks back to Deuteronomy. And the curse is that the one whose body hangs, because after they killed people, just to get the point across, they left their body out there so everybody could see it, sort of as a poster, you know, do this and that’s what happens. So His body was left in public out here as a curse.

Now the irony is that on that cross He did become a curse because what did He take upon Himself that God judged? Our sins. So in a surprising way…see this is a surprise, this is why God is always surprising us, it’s so neat because you don’t get…it’s not Dullsville watching God work things out. You think you know the way the Scripture says and there’s always room for surprises. There still is in history. So here the criminal law said the guy’s cursed, but what the criminal law usually meant was the guy committed sin, he was a criminal and he’s being judged for his crime, but in a deeper way the Lord Jesus Christ was cursed, not because He committed the crimes but He voluntarily assumed the responsibility for the crime and He was cursed. So was Jesus cursed on the cross? Yes? But was He cursed for His crime? No. He was cursed on the cross for our crime. So the Law was fulfilled but in a surprising way.

So this went on and now Satan’s got a big problem because you see, he didn’t really kill the King; he thought he did, he thought he stopped this kingdom business. But now what did He do? Now what he did is He accomplished the salvation of the world. Just exactly what he didn’t need, was to undo his legal claim in the fallen race. He thought if he could stop the kingdom then he’s got mankind where he wants us because from the very beginning he has hated the human race. He has hated us because he knows the human race was designed to subdue and to be the rulers of all creation. So he hasn’t had it in from the Garden of Eden on. So if he can stop the King he can stop this process. He tries to do it and what he winds up really doing is getting Jesus cursed, so now the legal basis for forgiveness and acceptability in the kingdom has been secured, by the very act of trying to stop it he guaranteed that the kingdom is going to come now. Thank you, very brilliant move.

So this goes on and after Christ is killed, He rises from the dead and He ascends and He ascends to the Father’s right hand, and the New Testament always qualifies it, it’s not God’s right hand, where is God’s right hand? It’s above what? Above all principalities and powers. So on the ranking scheme here are angels; here are men, they’re rulers, and on the ranking scheme Jesus is here, so guess where Satan is? He’s down there. So on the hierarchy of rank now not only has he secured the legal basis for the kingdom by his attempt to murder the King but now a member of the human race, a representative of this hated creation that he can’t stand, now a representative that represents the entire human race is seated on the throne above him; now he has to answer to the God-man King. So his brilliantly executed campaign, under God’s more brilliant campaign was two steps forward, he tries to hit, attack, drive it back and he winds up undoing himself here. So Satan’s moral claim upon the human race has been compromised; he doesn’t have that because now Christ has paid for sins. Of course it has to be accepted by belief, but the legal basis for salvation is now secure.

The next problem he has, which we’ll see now is the Holy Spirit descends on earth, now the gospel is going to break out all over the world. Now before he thought he had a problem in Israel and he had it localized; now it can happen anywhere so now he’s got a global problem to cope with, because no sooner does he block the gospel in one country, it breaks out in another country. England became the missionary nation; she went down, America becomes the missionary nation. America is probably not going to last too much longer, we find nations sending missionaries to us they think our way of life is so excessive. So maybe Latin America is going to be the next sending place for missions; we don’t know but it changes because the Holy Spirit changes His strategy. Every time the church starts working Satan brings his guns in, he says ah, I got a target now, bang bang, and he start shooting and then all of a sudden turns around and the Holy Spirit is starting something over here; hey guy, got another target.

And this has been going on all through church history. Just as soon as he contains the church some place it breaks out somewhere else. And you’ve heard the expression from church historians that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church because often what Satan tries to do when he can’t refute the gospel, he can’t come, so to speak in a man on man debate and square it off because his cultic delusions and deceptions and false religions don’t stand up, they fall apart under confrontation to the gospel, then what he does, he resorts to violence. And you can trace it down through church history, wherever you see physical violence against the Church it’s because Satan has failed by all other means to stop it. He’s tried deceptions, he’s tried heresy and the saints have stood and they have stood against him and stood against him and stood against him, so therefore he says okay, you guys standing up, now I’m going to really come after you.

We under estimate the ferocity of Satan. What is the image of him in the Scripture? He is a “roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.” This is not a little game that’s being played here, this is for keeps. This is for eternity keeps and the stakes here isn’t even the planet earth; the stakes are the whole universe, who will dominate the universe forever and ever? That’s the name of the game here, so we have a cosmic struggle on a scale that science fiction dramas just barely scratch the surface. So that’s what we have as far as the ascent and session.

Now what we’re going to do is we’re going to look at what happened after the Lord Jesus Christ arrived here in heaven. He told the disciples in the upper room discourse, He said when I go to be with My Father I will send the Holy Spirit. Now it’s interesting, He said “I will pray the Father and He will send the Spirit” and so forth, and then other places He said I will send the Spirit. We want to look at what happened on Pentecost because He’s in heaven and the first thing that happens is the Holy Spirit comes down to earth here; this is not the return of Christ as some liberal theologians thought; this is the First Advent of the Holy Spirit. This all happens in Acts 1 and 2, let’s turn to Acts 1 and pick it up and then we’re going to look at some references because a lot of stuff is happening here. This is not easy Scripture. I apologize if you’re here and may be a new Christian and you haven’t got a lot of background in the Bible, this is a little difficult because a lot of things are happening here, but just keep reading the Scripture and you’ll make it.

In Acts 1 Jesus is received out of sight, verse 9. That’s the public ascension, and you remember that during the conference I showed you the picture of where it happened. This happened in a place, there’s the place; that’s a photograph taken standing on the temple side of the Kidron Valley, looking east and that ridgeline, which you can see is not much of a hill, it’s just like a ridgeline, somewhere right around here because Bethany is on the other side of that place, there’s a road that goes around here and comes on the other side of that ridgeline that runs along there, somewhere on that ridge line the Lord Jesus Christ ascended. That’s where Acts 1:9 is happening; it’s happening right there, at that place. So publicly He rises into heaven and he goes and sits at the Father’s right hand.

And I said during the conference, verse 10 is a verse you want to pay attention to because in Acts 1:10 two angels stand there, and that’s another thing, of course you can get spooky, but the world is full of angels, good and evil, and the Church is vitally related in the spiritual conflict that’s going on here. And these two angels stand there, apparently men because when these angels manifest they manifest as men, usually wearing the clothing of the time, don’t know where they change their styles since the first century so they show up they’re wearing a T-shirt or something today, a white T-shirt. But there they are, they’re standing there as Jesus ascends and they fit, and they all have a sense of humor, very often the angels really have kind of a tongue in cheek type sense of humor and right here they say what are you looking up in the sky for? Which is kind of a silly question when you think of the surface of it; why am I looking up in the sky, I haven’t seen anything like this before, that’s why I’m looking up in the sky. And of course they’re asking it for another reason, they want them to think about what’s going on in front of them because that’s really the answer to the question, why are you looking up in the sky? Because something fantastic is happening here and I want to see it. So what they’re doing is, yeah, something is happening but let me tell you about what else is going to happen, and that’s the next sentence in verse 11.

Acts 1:11, “This Jesus, who was taken up form you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you watched Him go into heaven.” So physically He is going to return, He’s going to appear out of a cloud and He’s going to descend to some point on this planet; maybe CNN will be there, but whatever, the point is that it will be visible, it’s not some spooky spiritual apparition thing, this will be photographic material.

So they go back to Jerusalem, they stay there and Acts 2:1 the next event happens in this series of mysterious things. We’ve all heard about Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit, but let’s look at it for a minute. Pentecost had come; they were all in one place. Now the day of Pentecost is a holy day, and still is, in the Jewish calendar. In the spring of the Jewish calendar they had three key days; one was Passover, another one was Firstfruits, that was when the first crop would come out, it’s agricultural. And the third one was Pentecost, that was when the crop was in and they harvested the grain and they actually baked loaves. So one of these is Passover, that harps backs to the Exodus. Then there was Firstfruits, which was the beginning of their harvest, and then fifty days later Pentecost.

Now here’s what’s spooky. This Jewish calendar is a strange thing; it’s not like our calendar, it’s lunar, 30 day cycles of the moon, 30 something point something and they have these days that are not integrated with our solar calendar because they are out of sequence, you have to adjust the lunar calendar. But that year when the day of Passover happened, by the Judean calendar at least, who was crucified? The Lord Jesus Christ died, and He died exactly on the day, the right day in the Jewish calendar. Now this is a pretty amazing thing because it appeared to be the result of random trials, all the political forces involved, the Roman pressure was involved, the high priests were involved and all this happened, and of course the holiday, they wanted to clean up things and get it out of the way, but He died right here. Now the other interesting thing was that very year on the calendar of Firstfruits guess what else happened? He rose from the dead, on the very day of Firstfruits; interesting!

Now the third thing happens; the Holy Spirit comes on exactly the day of that Hebrew calendar in the spring, boom, the Holy Spirit comes. Does that sort of tell you that the Jewish calendar is sort of integrated with the cosmic plan? It sounds that way, and there is an unfilled section of the Jewish calendar for the fall season, and it has three holidays that have not been fulfilled yet. The first one is the Feast of Trumpets, Yom Kippur, and the Feast of Tabernacles. Now scholars, conservative Bible-believing scholars think that something’s going to happen at the Second Advent of Christ on those days. This is not talking about the rapture of the Church now; we’re talking about the Second Return of Christ to judge and set up the kingdom. Something unknown will happen on the day of the Feast of Trumpets, and on Yom Kippur the guess is, this is a guess, it’s not put out dogmatically, but the guess is that on that day, the day of atonement, will be the day in the future when the nation Israel will say, under intense pressure of the time of the Tribulation, when they’re suffering like they’ve never suffered before, when they’re under tremendous pressure, that on Yom Kippur they will finally do what the Lord Jesus Christ asked them to do as a nation in Matthew 23.

Turn to Matthew 23:39, here is His farewell to the city of Jerusalem. He has come into the city, they’ve rejected Him, verse 37 he says, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.” By the way, in the gender wars that verse shows you that we identify as female-ness, character of the female versus the male, the female caring and civilizing power is part of God’s character also because it’s the hen, not the rooster, that’s being talked about here. And it’s care of children that’s being talked about, and this is a manifestation of a side of God’s character that is behind the design of the woman. Verse 38, “Behold, your house is being left to you desolate. [39] For I say to you, from now on you will not see me until you,” the nation, He’s addressing here, “until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.’” In other words, Jesus will not set his foot on this planet until first the nation Israel welcomes him back. And so that’s what some scholars believe is going to happen on the day of Yom Kippur, the day of the atonement; suddenly there will be a crying out, and the guess is that it’s going to be using an Old Testament text to cry out with, and the Old Testament text that they will cry out with in the Yom Kippur of the future will be Isaiah 53. Suddenly that passage in the Old Testament will make sense and they will realize that the suffering servant of Isaiah is the long awaited Christ. Yes, we now realize we made a mistake, Jesus was that suffering servant, “Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord.” And He will come and by Tabernacles, which is our November, somewhere before Thanksgiving, Tabernacles is the celebration of blessing, which is interpreted, maybe, that that’s the start of the millennial kingdom.

What we want to focus on here is this element in the spring cycle, that day of Pentecost. Go back to Acts 2:2, “When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place,” and they experienced three miracles, verses 2-4, “there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind,” now it says it came from heaven, it didn’t come from the street, they were in a building, it didn’t come from street level. It was as though it came through the ceiling, as it were, it came down, it didn’t come from the side. There was this awful noise, this violent rushing wind “and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.” So the noise was everywhere in the room.

Then the second miracle, Acts 2:3, “Then there appeared to them tongues, as of fire, distributing themselves and they rested on each one of them.” Now artists always have these little flames that look like something somebody picked off a small candle; I suspect since the word “fire” can mean anything in Scripture that’s brilliant and light, in fact, it’s used for lightening, I have always envisioned this as an electrical type phenomenon where if you’ve seen lightening discharges, fascinating to watch, taking high speed pictures of lightening, it’s about several million volts a spark, and about 40-50,000 amps, for those of you who are electrical type, you can compute the power in one of those lightening strokes, if you could capture that you could light up half of Connecticut for quite a while. So lightening splits because it’s looking for a pathway and what this says is that from heaven comes a noise, it filled the whole house, and there appeared to them tongues as of fire, so maybe it wasn’t the long stroke of lightening, maybe it was just short sections, but whatever the short section was it went around and was sparking around the room onto the people that were there. So that was number two.

And of course number three, in Acts 2:4, “And they were all filled with the Spirit and began to speak with other languages, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.” Now I can’t go into all the Scriptures, I’m sure Jay has taught this before but verse 4 is talking about known human languages, this is not some blalublablubla stuff that’s going on, because the languages are listed in verses 8-10, the languages of the Diaspora Jews that happened to be there for the Feast of Pentecost. And all of a sudden these people were speaking in many, many different languages. Well, what does this mean? One of the things that it does mean is that whatever is happening, it’s going to reverberate throughout all language groups, that whatever is going on here is not linguistically confined to Hebrews.

You say well why are you making a point of that. Because the big religious discussion today is over Islam, and I don’t know how much you know about Islam but one of the central features of Islam is that God cannot speak except in Arabic; any good Muslim has to know Arabic in order to read the Koran. Yeah, you can go down to the bookstore and buy an English version, but you try to use that English Koran on your Muslim friend they’re going to say well, that’s English, you can’t go on the basis of English. So they confine God’s revelation to Arabic. And I think I gave you the story of the lady who was the daughter of one of the chief Muslim mullah’s in Tehran who as a young girl was raped by a very strict dad she had to have a tutor in Arabic so she could learn all the Koran verses and the girl’s dad wanted his daughter to know what it was she was memorizing, not just memorize the sound. So he had a tutor and she was going through this and she’s sitting there as this young girl and she’s saying wait a minute, if Allah is the God of all things, why do I have to learn Arabic to talk to Allah, you know, can’t he talk in Farsi, because she’s Persian, the language of Iran is Farsi. Why can’t he talk in Farsi? I mean, if he made us all, this girl really had her brains going, and she happened to be in the library downtown Tehran doing some homework and her foot hit something underneath the table and she looks down to see what’s underneath the table and what’s there is a Bible in Farsi.

Nobody to this day knows how the Bible got there, she takes it to the librarian said well you can have it, it’s not part of the library, I don’t know where that came from. So right here in the heart of a very strict Shiite regime somebody puts a Bible there and she takes it home and her dad just about reads her out of the house, get that Bible out of here, and being a good rebellious little girl she decides well, if my father doesn’t want me to have that there must be something good in it. So she says I’m going to read that. So with a flashlight under her pillow at night this girl reads all through the whole Bible in Farsi, she’s so excited about reading what God’s doing in Farsi and to make a long story short she becomes a Christian. They’re out to kill her and so she fled, first to Turkey, then she fled to Spain, then the mullah’s sent their secret people out to go kill her, assassinate her because she’s an embarrassment to the Shiites, because here she is, she’s the daughter of one of the guys that’s Khomeini’s right hand guy, and she was in a safe house in Baltimore, she wrote a book and now she’s somewhere else but she has to be kind of cool about where she is because she’s a real embarrassment because of her conversion.

But it’s a neat story about what led to her conversion was her sense that the God of history should be able to speak in different languages. And it gets back to Pentecost. Right from the start at Pentecost the gospel is going into different languages without any problem. Look at what the people are saying, Acts 2:8, “We hear them in our own language,” there wasn’t a translation problem here, the gospel is going to go in every language.

Now Peter is going to do an explanation; here’s where things get complicated and I want you to have patience to hang in there for 20-30 minutes as we go through Peter’s address because I’m going to revert back to some Old Testament background for this speech. Why am I spending time on Peter’s speech? Because Peter’s speech, when you read it carefully lets us know what the thinking was before Paul came along, before the epistles were written, what was going on early on in this inter-advent period. What was the perception of the people that were on the ground, that were seeing this thing go? Let’s not read back what we think they thought because we know how things ultimately came about. So we’re going to try to take a time machine; here’s Christ, here’s the resurrection, here’s Pentecost; that’s the beginning of the inter-advent age. Paul has not yet come, the epistles have not yet been written, they’re still in Jerusalem, they’re still all Jews, they haven’t left the city of Jerusalem, but they have this strange thing called Pentecost happen.

So Peter gets up and he expounds to interpret the meaning of these three miracles. So he says, Acts 2:14, he takes his stand, “But Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice and he declared to them, ‘Men of Judah and all you who live in Jerusalem,” notice who he is addressing; he is not addressing the Church, he is addressing the nation Israel. These are Jewish people, notice in verse 29, what does he call the Jewish people he’s addressing in that address? He uses the word “brethren,” the same word later used for Christians. But he’s certainly in this context “brethren” doesn’t mean… [tape turns] … by definition these people don’t believe. You’ve got to be careful, just because you see adelphos or something like that in the text it doesn’t mean a Christian all the time. Look at the context, and that’s why this is a very difficult speech because it’s hard for us to go back in time and kind of get stupid about the whole New Testament and just think of what Peter saw, what these people saw at this time.

He takes his stand and he says, Acts 2:15, “These guys aren’t drunk, as you think,” I always like the last part of the clause of verse 15. Now Peter wasn’t some sheltered saint somewhere. He knew what boozing it up meant, and he said guys, you know, you all know that people don’t get drunk the third hour of the day, I mean you carouse at night, he says we’re big boys, we all know that, so knock it off, nobody is drunk here. [16] “But this is what is spoken of through the prophet Joel,” and he begins to quote from the book of Joel, verse 17, 18, 19, 20 and 21. And if you have one of the study Bibles you notice at the end of verse 18, if you have the different fonts you’ll see that he injects something in verse 18, in other words, here’s a Petrine addition to the Old Testament text where he says in verse 18, “even upon my bondslaves, both men and women, I will pour in those days forth of My spirit and they shall prophesy.” That’s an interpretation; in other words he’s saying look, they’re preaching, they’re interpreting, they’re prophesying.

So he identifies this with Joel; that’s one observation I want you to make. We’re going to go back to Joel and get some background, so turn back to Joel 2:28. Now this is centuries before Peter, the Church doesn’t exist, isn’t even around, it’s not addressed to the Church, it’s addressed to Israel and Joel has a picture here, so let’s draw the picture that Joel produced. “And it shall come to pass after this,” talking about after days, “that I will pour our My Spirit,” now he’s quoting God here, so first observation about this text, who is the “I” that does the pouring out? The “I” in the text is Jehovah, Yahweh. So that’s interesting. “I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind,” all kinds of men, “your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions, [29] on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days.” So verses 28-29 what’s the emphasis? That whatever this phenomenon is it is going to be throughout all society; it’s not going to be one or two prophets, it’s not just the wealthy, it’s also the poor; it’s not just the free, it’s also the slave, and it’s not just men, it’s also women. So it is a universal thing that is prophesied to take place.

Then in Joel 2:30-31 he prophesies cosmic disturbances. He says, “And I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth: blood, fire, and columns of smoke. [31] The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.” So whatever this phenomenon is it’s going to happen prior to the day of the Lord, which is the judgment that precedes the kingdom. So the picture we have is that this phenomenon will happen prior to the set up of the kingdom, because it happens prior to the day of the Lord. Verse 32, “And it shall come about that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered,” and so forth.

Let’s go back to Peter; so Peter is using Joel and the question now is, okay, the disciples are prophesying, all of them, and Peter says it’s this kind of phenomenon that Joel’s talking about here. Now the question we have is obviously: well, where is the blood, fire and vapor of smoke. And there are those who are saying well, that’s symbolism, you have to interpret symbolically, not literal. Well, I don’t believe that. In Acts 2:22 it goes on, how does Peter interpret it. Let’s follow the context. “Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs,” now the miracles and wonders and signs, the same word is used in verse 19 of the quote, so what Peter obviously is saying is that the Lord Jesus Christ did wonders and signs, and they were the same kind of thing as predicted in verse 19. Now we don’t have any record of blood, fire and vapor of smoke, other than one, and remember which one it is? What happened when Christ was dying for the sins of the world? It was darkness on the face of the land; something strange happened, and I just wished that we had more records because I can’t believe that that wasn’t recorded somewhere, that people didn’t notice something happened for those hours that Jesus Christ was bearing sin, something happened in the sky, something happened to the sun, it’s as though the universe resonated with what was going on on that cross. So there’s another reason why verses 19-20 weren’t completely fulfilled in the New Testament, we’ll get into that in a moment.

So Peter goes on and he says the Lord Jesus did this, [23] “This man delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God you nailed to a cross,” see how accusatory this sermon is; it’s saying you are guilty Israel, I’m telling you are guilty legally before God for this crime against killing the King. [24] “And God raised Him up,” and then in verses 25-28 he cites Psalm 16 which says that the Messiah will not be bound in death; death will not triumph over Him. Peter makes a deduction in verse 29 that you can’t be talking about David, Psalm 16 is by David but it can’t be about David because David is down the street, you can go down and look at his tomb he says. So because he was a prophet, he says in verse 30, God had sworn to Him with an oath, he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of Christ. Now verse 32 and 33 connect Pentecost with the session; so we’ve emphasized the ascension and session of Christ, now here’s the link. Right from the very start Peter makes the link and he says, “This Jesus God has raised up, to which we are all witnesses.” There’s the resurrection.

Now in Acts 2:33 is the ascension and session, “Having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear.” Now careful analysis of verse 33 sentence structure; look at the sentence, find the main subject and find the main verb of verse 33. “Having been exalted to the right hand of God,” that’s a participial clause, that’s not the main clause, “having received from the Father the promise of the Spirit,” that’s another clause, it’s not the main verb, it’s not the main subject, the next part, “He poured forth,” there’s the main subject and the main verb. Now question? Who is “He” in verse 33, the main subject? Is that the Father or the Son? “He poured forth which you both see and hear.” Well, whoever “He” refers to, it’s a pronoun, a pronoun has to refer back to a previous noun, what is the pronoun referring back to? Well, who is the subject of the two clauses? Jesus.

Now do you notice something stunning here in the grammar of verse 33, do you see what Peter is saying? Do you grab this thing? Notice, what did we say Joel said was the subject? Jehovah, in the prophecy. Now look what’s happening here in verse 33, who suddenly takes the position in place of Jehovah? Jesus does, the God-man sits on the throne and He pours out the Spirit; He is doing what the Old Testament said Jehovah would do. Conclusion: Jesus is God. He is the role of God Himself, doing what God had been prophesied to do. So it says that Jesus has promised this and Jesus is now in charge of all this phenomena that’s happening prior to the coming of the kingdom. Now what do you suppose this does to people who were just kind of moseying around and thought Jesus was just another guy, another Jew, He happened to get crucified, He had a little problem with the police or something, now all of a sudden you have the supernatural thing which the prophecy says is antecedent to the day of the Lord and the setting up of the kingdom, and who’s behind that? Jesus is. Oh-oh, now what has happened here is that the Lord Jesus Christ has become the stumbling stone for the nation Israel. Now they can’t avoid Him. Now they, in order to get into the kingdom they are going to have to deal with the person of Jesus Christ because he is at the Father’s right hand, He is the One who is controlling the stage to get into the kingdom here.

Now Acts goes on and Peter makes a second address in Acts 3. In chapter 3 there’s a miracle happen and so forth, now Acts 3:17 Peter starts in with another address, and he’s got a miracle, he’s got a sign, and again, without Paul, without the New Testament epistles, put yourself back there at the day of Pentecost, very close to it, now you see the fact that he’s working with these people, he’s trying to explain things. He says, “Brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers did also.” Notice he calls them “brethren” again. He’s not saying they are believers, these are fellow Jews. [18] “But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that Christ should suffer has thus been fulfilled.”

Now watch the language in verse 19, this is not a simple Church Age evangelism message here; this is a special kind of message directed to the nation Israel, “Repent, return that your sins may be wiped away, in order that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, [20] And that He may send Jesus, the Christ, appointed for you, [21] Whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things, about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time.” Now that’s a long sentence so let’s take it apart; there’s lots of stuff in here.

Acts 3:19, 20 and 21. In verse 19 he says you’ve got to repent, that means change your mind about this guy Jesus, you’re all screwed up folks, you’d better rethink your whole worldview here because this guy is the one in heaven now and He’s sending the Spirit, so He’s not just a little carpenter from Galilee. “Repent, return, that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.” If you were a Jew and you hadn’t read the New Testament, and you hadn’t been taught anything about the Church, you were a Jew, you know nothing except Israel, how would you understand “the times of refreshing” in verse 19? The kingdom, the times of refreshing are going to come, and Jesus is going to send it to us. And verse 20, “that He may send Jesus … appointed for you,” who’s the “you?” Israel. Jesus is going to be sent down, why? Why is He sent down right away? Because heaven must receive it until something happens; this is the inter-advent age; the inter-advent age will end when the period of restoration comes, so what he’s saying is, here’s the miracles, the day of the Lord is not yet here, and the kingdom is going to come. Now he’s saying there’s a gap; he’s not saying how big this gap is between what happened on the day of Pentecost and the day of the Lord and the coming of the kingdom. The Church isn’t even in the picture here. So don’t read the Church into this. This is all Jewish, it all has to do with Israel, and he’s saying that you have got to repent, we’ve seen it in Matthew, until Israel gets it straight this is not going to happen in the inter-advent age, it’s going to go on and on and on and on and on and on until you guys get the picture.

Okay, what are we learning here? What we’re learning is something that Jesus Himself prophesied in the book of Matthew. We want to go back to a little parable Jesus taught because He said this was going to happen. And this is the key to understand what’s going on here and how the Church finally gets involved. The Church is not in Matthew 22 either. I’m just showing you that what’s happening here is history, like an according, is now opening, and an entirely unforeseen new age is going to appear here, the inter-advent period. And it’s a dynamic thing. It’s contingent, under the sovereignty of God, it’s contingent what Israel’s going to do with Jesus Christ.

In Matthew 22:2 Jesus, as He was preparing the disciples for this new thing, this new inter-advent period, He told many stories, but this particular one is interesting. “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. [3] He sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling to come. [4] He sent ye other slaves, saying tell those who have been invited, Behold, I have prepared a dinner, my xoen and fatted livestock, all butchered, everything is ready, come to the wedding feast. [5] But they paid no attention, went their way, one to his farm, another to his business. [6] And the rest, they seized his slaves, mistreated them and killed them. [7] But the king was enraged and he sent his armies and he destroyed the murderers and set their city on fire. [8] Then he said to his slaves, The wedding is ready, but those who were invited are not worthy. [9] Go therefore into the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast. [10] And those slaves went out into the streets, they gathered together all they found, evil and good, and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests.” Then it talks about the king and the fact that they couldn’t get in unless they had the right clothes.

The point I want to make tonight is how many times were those who were invited to the wedding feast invited? Twice; there were two invitations. Now who do you suppose of those that were invited to the wedding feast? First of all, what is the wedding feast? The wedding feast is a picture of the coming kingdom of God, the millennial kingdom, the wedding feast to come. And who is invited to that but the nation Israel; the prophets have said, you know, this is the kingdom; you’re going to be in the kingdom. So one invitation happens in verse 3; that’s invitation number one, and it’s rejected. A second invitation happens in verse 4 and verse 4 results, and verse 6, where the people who do the inviting are being killed. How many disciples were killed in the Gospels? None. At what point were the disciples starting to get killed? The book of Acts. So this whole complex that’s going on with Peter here in early Acts is a second invitation to the nation Israel to get with the program; the Church isn’t in view. Now I know the Church started at Pentecost, I understand that, we’ll get to that tomorrow.

But the point I’m saying right now is if you and I were there as observers we wouldn’t have seen it. What we would have seen is Peter getting up and proclaiming, not just to the ordinary Jew, he’s proclaiming to the rulers; he’s saying you people screwed up, you crucified the wrong guy, He turns out to be the Messiah, He’s in heaven now and He’s sending what was prophesied in Joel and other Old Testament prophets to earth, you’ve sent he miracles, we’re doing these healings, we’ve got this apostolic ability to speak in other languages, what’s your answer t this? The answer is that this is prelude to the coming kingdom; you guys can still have your kingdom if you’ll listen to us. So this is invitation number two, and it explains why the early chapters of the book of Acts is so Israel and Jewish centered, because it is Israel and Jewish centered; they’re getting a second chance. You say well, isn’t that unusual? No, it isn’t; how many times did Israel get a chance to invade the land? Twice; they were going to come first in Moses’ generation, and then what did they have to do? They bounced out and they came in Joshua’s generation. How many dynasties were they given as a kingdom? Saul and David; two, and you’ll see this theme again and again, God always gives them two.

Now why do you suppose it’s two and not five, not one; what is the Law of evidence in the Mosaic Law Code? How many witnesses? Two or three witnesses. So God is being very gracious, He’s giving men plenty of opportunity for evidence, to believe; He’s going to do it twice, there’s no excuse after twice; you’ve had witnesses come to you with evidence twice, the Lord Jesus Christ came, He did miracles and you rejected Him. No here we are, Peter says, we’re going around the city, same city Jesus was in, we’re doing miracles, we’re speaking in other languages, now get with the program, you’ve got evidence. You said He was just a carpenter; now you know He rose from the dead, he ascended into heaven, He sent this new thing, He’s doing exactly what the Messiah was doing and moreover, He’s taking a position of Jehovah Himself that you have to deal with. So we have these two kingdoms.

Now the parable says, in verse 7, what’s going to happen? After the two invitations the king gets angry and he sends his armies and they do what? What happened to Jerusalem in 70 AD? It was destroyed. So Jesus predicted everything that’s going on in the Matthew 22 parable. And we come now to a conclusion that’s very forceful. We go back to the book of Acts and the theme tonight, all I’m trying to show tonight is that after Jesus ascended and seated, He sent the Spirit and that sending of the Holy Spirit was notification to the nation Israel to get with the program, you’ve got a chance here to still bring in the kingdom.

In Acts 2:46 notice something about the people that had gathered together. Where were they going every day? “In the temple,” see, they hadn’t made a break with Judaism; the believers that were responding in those days didn’t know anything about a Church in the sense that we know. All they knew was something neat was happening, they knew that they loved the Lord Jesus Christ and they, as good Jews, were going to the temple along with the other Jews and carrying on with their Judaism; there’s no sense of a separate movement yet at this point in the book of Acts. However, there is a sense that the resurrected Jesus Christ now assumes center stage; He has become “the way, the truth and the life.”

And we go to Acts 4 for an exchange, a dramatic exchange that centers on this new Lord Jesus Christ and why the name of Christ becomes a critical issue. We said back in the conference, it’s still going on, the inauguration, when Franklin Graham got up in front of President Bush, the Supreme Court, there in the mall in Washington DC and he deliberately in front of national television closed the introductory prayer, “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” You could have watched the teeth fall out of people; that was one thing that was considered politically incorrect to mention the name of Jesus Christ. Now you can curse in His name in the office, that’s okay, but don’t ever pray in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. So Franklin Graham answered his critics last month when he went before the U.N. and they had a conference on aids and the guy that heads the U.N. was there, and Clinton was there, and Hillary and everybody else that occupies New York now, so they were all there, and what did Franklin Graham do? He got up and prayed in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ again, just in case they didn’t hear him the first time. Now why is this? This is something that incenses people.

I just got an e-mail from my son whose in Korea, right next to the DMZ and he said you know, it’s interesting, I went up to the DMZ the other day and there’s a Christian chaplain there, and of course the chaplains all wear the cross if they’re Christian chaplains, I don’t know what the Buddhists wear, big tummy or something, but the point is that the chaplains go up there with a thing on their uniform. And the North Korean guards watch this chaplain, a Presbyterian guy, they start yelling and cursing at him. When the Jewish chaplain goes they don’t bother him; when the Buddhist chaplain goes they don’t bother him; they only bother with the chaplain that wears the cross of Jesus Christ. That just infuriates them. Now why? What’s the spirit of the world? I mean, you know, when you drop a bomb and you hear screams you know you hit the target. Right? Okay; why are people screaming about the name of the Lord Jesus Christ? Because it’s truth, it’s confronting the spiritual powers and principalities with what they don’t want, they want to suppress it because they know He’s above them, He sits at the Father’s right hand.

So watch what happens in Acts 4, they had a problem with political incorrectness, and so they are on a hearing, and they’ve been called before a public hearing, put them in jail, verse 3, Acts 4:5, “And it came to pass on the nest day, that the rulers and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem. [6] The high priest” was there, I mean all the big boys are here, in this one. Now these disciples, I thought we got rid of Jesus, now we’ve got to deal with these clowns; they just don’t go away, they just keep bothering us here in the city of Jerusalem; they can go somewhere else is their attitude. So when they placed them in the center they began, [7] “By what power, or by what name, have you done this?” Look at how often the word “name” comes up here. See, this is what’s new in this new inter-advent period, the name of Jesus Christ. [8] “Then Peter filled with the Spirit, said to them, You rulers of the people, and elders of Israel, [9] If we’re on trial today for a benefit done to a sick man, as how this man is made well, [10] Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ, the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by this name this man stands before you in good health. [11] He’s become the stone that you rejected, and has become the cornerstone,” and look at verse 12, of all the politically incorrect statements to say, “There is salvation in no one else; there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” End of discussion! Put that one on the table and deal with it.

You see, there’s a dogmatism and a confidence on the part of the early Christians and there’s anger and there’s hatred, and this is a warning to all of us. Jesus Christ’s name is a charged issue. Not because of the people you may use it with, but because of the powers and principalities that rule behind them. You don’t go mentioning the name of Jesus Christ and praying in His name without automatically becoming a target for the principalities and the powers of this world. That name draws lightening, and the fact that it draws lightening and confrontation and anger and hatred is proof that it is what it claims to be; we live in a hostile world. [13] “And so as they observe the confidence of Peter and John, they marveled, they were uneducated and untrained, they began to recognize them as they had been with Jesus.” Now that’s a neat statement, “recognized that they had been with Jesus,” after they just started talking about Jesus so dogmatically. Oh-oh, got another Jesus freak.

Acts 4:14, “And seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they had nothing to say in reply.” See, they don’t have any evidence; they just have to use political force and pressure. So they say in verse 16 what are we going to do with these guys? “For the fact that a noteworthy miracle has taken place through them and is apparent to everybody around us, we can’t deny it. [17] But in order that we not spread any more….” Look at verse 17 folks, look carefully. “In order that it might not spread, let us warn them to speak no more to an man in this name.” You can talk about God but don’t dare talk about the Lord Jesus Christ. [18] “And when they had summoned them, they commanded not to speak or teach in the name of Jesus,” see how often the name of Jesus comes up in this passage? This is the third or fourth time; “in the name of Jesus.” So Peter and John answered them; and you, we, may be involved someday in the same confrontation Peter was and you’re going to have give the same answer, and you might be going to jail for it, it’s getting that way in this country.

Acts 4:19, “But Peter and John answered and said to them, Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge; [20] But we’re cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard. [21] And they threatened them some more,” see that’s the old story to try to intimidate you. And unfortunately a lot of Christians are intimidated. We have got to learn not to be intimidated. The people that are doing the intimidation are air bags. They don’t have any evidence, they don’t have any stature in the cosmic order, Jesus is the One that has the stature. So there’s nothing to be intimidated about; if they kill you “absent from the body, face to face with the Lord.” You’ve got an early vacation. So there’s no way that we have to be intimidated about this name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now when they were released, watch what the people did, when they heard that they’d been released, Acts 4:24, here’s a guideline on how to pray in the middle of these situations; it’s a very, very practical guideline and watch the mentality of these people as to how they construct their prayer. “When they heard this, they lifted up their voices to God with one accord and said, [‘O Lord, it is Thou who made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them.]”

And what doctrine do they start with in verse 24 in their prayer? Creation, the Creator/creature distinction, they go back to the origin of the foundation. Why? Because this involves the Creator of all and if you get that anchor in your soul everything else follows. Who’s in charge around here, these clowns or the One who created the universe? We’re praying to the One who created the universe.

Now Acts 2:25, “Who by the Holy Spirit, by the mouth of our father David, Thy servant, did say,” and that’s Psalm 2, remember during the conference we went through Psalm 2, talking about why the heathen rage, those of you who love music, you know Handel’s Messiah, that’s the section in Handel’s Messiah, “Why did the Gentiles rage, and the people devise futile things? [26] The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together,” and notice what they do in verse 27, they quote the Scripture in verse 25 and 26 but what are they doing in verse 27? They’re applying the Scripture noun by noun to their current circumstance. So they’ve quoted the Scripture, Psalm 2, a thousand years before, ten centuries it was written before this time. Now they apply the Scripture in verse 27, “For truly in this city,” they’re talking to God now, and they’re praying the Scripture back to God, it’s a wonderful thing.

I have a friend who’s been taught by a fellow who’s an old warrior on the mission field and I’d never seen anybody pray like this guy, and I’m fascinated by him because somewhere in his Christian life this guy really got learning hot to really pray. I’ve been so impressed, he’s the only guy I’ve ever seen, pastor, who’s had 4 x 6 cards of everyone in his congregation, and they’re all dog-eared and covered with the grease of his fingers. You know you just look at that and you know what he’s been doing. And he’s a fantastic prayer, and he keeps telling me how he learned to pray in a forceful way, he said I was told by this old guy who worked with missionaries, who saw so many missionaries crater under the pressure of the mission field, he said you pray back the Scriptures to God who wrote them. And what it does, it controls your petition, so you’re automatically in His will. And you’re dealing with God so that…you’re asking Him to do what He said He would do, so He can’t say no to that, so you have a confidence that you’re praying His own words back to Him. Now that’s what these people are doing.

In Acts 4:25-26 they face this crisis with leadership, they grab hold of the verses in Psalm 2, and then they begin to say now Lord, [27] “in this city,” see there’s the circumstances, “they’re gathered together against your holy Servant Jesus, whom You did anoint,” see they’re quoting the Word, the anointed one is the word “Christ” at the end of verse 26, “both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel.” So you see in the end of verse 27 there’s four objects, four situations locally to them that they say fit verse 26. Verse 26 said “kings of the earth and rulers,” so they say well Lord, Herod’s a ruler, Pontius Pilate is a ruler, look what they’re doing, so isn’t it true that they’re taking stands against Your Jesus; now Lord, look what they ask them to do. Oh, in verse 28 they say “to do whatever Thy hand and Thy purpose predestined to occur.” It’s under sovereignty and it’s not an accident, they say Lord, you’ve allowed this to happen, now Lord, there’s their petition and their prayer, [29] “take note of their threats, and grant that Thy bond-servants may speak Thy word with all confidence, [30] while you extend Your hand to heal, and signs and wonders take place through the name of Thy holy Servant Jesus.” And the place was shaken.

Now what shook the place, because that prayer was right on target. I mean the Lord must have been really, yeah guys, that’s the way I want you to do it! Because he is quoting God’s Word back to God and they’re applying it to their circumstance and they’re saying…they’re not chickening out, they’re not being intimidated, all they ask in verse 29 is Lord, help us be confident; look at the threats we face and we’re claiming the promise.

Our time is up, just to summarize what we’ve said; this is the fallout of the ascension and session. This is Pentecost and Israel is being given a chance here to repent, but the big idea that applies to us is that now we know who sits at the Father’s right hand, we are authorized to use His name, and we are not to be intimidated by people who don’t like the name. If you don’t like the name stop cursing in it if you don’t like it. If people object to you praying in Jesus name just tell them to knock it off in the office for a while; okay, I won’t pray in Jesus name, you shut up too. Try that one on for size; and they won’t do that of course. So this is the message out of the early chapters of Acts, the Lord Jesus is the Lord.

Father, we thank you……